How are the developmental pathways of urban at-risk adolescents
affected by school and neighborhood settings, and how can this knowledge
inform the creation of programs and policies to promote positive
youth development?

My current work reflects my long-standing interests in two fundamental
issues/questions. Understanding the relationship between the pattern
of transactions among people and their social contexts, or what
I refer to as social regularities (Seidman, 1988), and the identification
of the strategies, tactics, and loci of intervention to alter the
social regularities of a setting and promote positive psychological
development. I also continue to work on critical conceptual and
methodological issues, e.g., culturally anchored methodology (Hughes
& Seidman, 2002), holistic perspectives and methods (Seidman & Pedersen,
2003), and integrative chapters and volumes in community psychology
(Rappaport & Seidman, 2000; Revenson & Seidman, 2002). I am also
a member of the newly funded National Science Foundation Center
of Culture, Development, & Education (CRCDE). I am particularly
interested in the culture of schools and classrooms and how these
"cultures" impact the well known "achievement gap."

Adolescent Development in the Urban Context

Since joining the faculty at NYU, I have been conducting a longitudinal
study of over 1400 economically at-risk urban adolescents, known
as the Adolescent Pathways Project (APP; Seidman, 1991). The bulk
of my work on the APP has focused on several major issues: a) understanding
how the normative transitions from elementary to junior high school
and from junior to senior high school impact developmental trajectories;
b) developing a holistic understanding of how the unique constellations
of daily transactions of youth with their family, peers, school,
and neighborhood are associated with different developmental outcomes;
and c) discovering and understanding profiles of contextual competence.

Normative School Transitions

The transition into junior high school seems to be far more problematic
than the transition into high school. While academic performance
drops across both transitions, self-esteem only declines across
the transition to junior high school (Seidman et al, 1994, 1996).
These changes do not vary as a function of student gender or race/ethnicity.
After making the transition to junior high school the students become
more disengaged from the educational enterprise: They report increased
academic hassles, decreased support from teachers, and reduced extracurricular
involvement. Two years after this school transition, these effects
are not attenuated. Currently, we are examining the long-term effects,
i.e., five years later, of these normative transitions and the potential
factors that moderate and mediate these effects, e.g., racial/ethnic
identity..

As we have begun to look at individual trajectories of self-esteem
across the transition to junior high school and beyond, we find
that there are seven different patterns of change in self-esteem
over time, not one. Only two of these self-esteem trajectories experience
immediate and dramatic declines in self-esteem across the transition
year even though they were relatively high in self-esteem before
commencing the transition to junior high school. These two trajectories
are not differentiated from the other two trajectories that began
high in self-esteem in terms of any personality or individual demographic
variables. On the other hand, the students constituting the trajectories
that declined dramatically were more likely to reside in under-resourced
neighborhoods and families. These families appeared too over taxed
to be able to provide the support needed for youth to successfully
make this difficult school transition.

Holistic Views of Family, Peers, and Neighborhood Settings

In a series of studies, we have looked holistically at youth perceived
daily hassles, social support, and involvement with family, peer,
and neighborhood (Seidman et al., 1998, 1999). Within each setting
youth describe a series of dramatically different constellations
of perceived transactions. These different constellations of transactions
place youth at differential levels of risk/protection, in terms,
of self-esteem, depression, and antisocial behavior. When we examine
the joint effects of family and peer profiles on self-esteem, we
find a strong association between family and peer profiles that
are similar, yet peer transactions also partially mediate the association
between family transactions and self-esteem (Roberts et al., 2000).

Contextual Competence

Most recently, we have uncovered nine distinct constellations
of youths' behavioral and perceptual self-reports of engagement
and performance with peer, school, athletic, employment, cultural,
and religious contexts when they are 16 to 17 years of age. We refer
to these as profiles of contextual competence (Pedersen et al.,
under review). Overall, profiles with high engagement in only a
single context, such as religion or athletics, do not buffer youths
from negative developmental outcomes. Profiles representing high
engagement and performance with two or more contexts are associated
with higher self-esteem and lower depression. At the same time,
profiles marked by high engagement in the risky contexts of athletics
or employment are associated with greater delinquency. These results
have important implications for planning of services by youth organizations.
Using these profiles of contextual competence in conjunction with
the youth's time diaries, we plan to examine the association between
profile and time use. We also plan to examine the direct and indirect
effects of family and peer transactions during early adolescence
on the profiles of contextual competence that emerge in middle adolescence.

Intervention and Policy

Our research on school transitions has lead to evidence-based
major policy recommendations for educational reform (Seidman, Aber,
& French, 2003; Seidman, in preparation). We have found that the
transition to the junior high school is riskier than the transition
to senior high school because a greater developmental mismatch occurs
at the time of the transition to junior high school. That is, early
adolescents experience numerous biological, cognitive, emotional,
and social changes. These changes occur at a time when students
make the shift from an elementry school setting in which all the
students and teachers are known to each other to one in which they
are shuffled from one unfamiliar teacher and set of classmates to
another classroom every 40 minutes. Our findings, in conjunction
with other literature, lead us to recommend that: a) more resources
and attention be directed toward the organization of schooling during
early adolescence; b) ideally, early adolescents should attend K-8
schools; and c) when K-8 schools are not feasible, middle grades
schools need to be reorganized into smaller and more stable environments
attuned to the developmental needs of early adolescents to maintain
their engagement in the educational enterprise.

Exemplary Project-Community-Based Adolescent Diversion Program
(1975), National Institute of Law Enforcement Administration Agency,
U.S. Dept. of Justice

Vicarious Awards

My doctoral students have received first prize for their dissertations
five different times - twice from the Society for the Psychological
Study of Social Issues, twice from the Division of Consulting Psychology,
and once from the Society for Community Research and Action.

Seidman, E., Aber, J.L., Allen, L., & French, S.E. (1996). The
impact of the transition to high school on the self-system and perceived
social context of poor urban youth. American Journal of Community
Psychology, 24, 489-516.

Rappaport, J., Seidman, E., & Davidson, W.S. (1979). Demonstra-tion
research and manifest versus true adoption: The natural history
of a research project to divert adolescents from the legal system.
In R.F. Munoz, L.R. Snowden, & J.G. Kelly (Eds.), Social and
psychological research in community settings: Designing and conducting
programs for social and personal well-being (pp. 101-144). San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Delaney, J.A., Seidman, E., & Willis, G. (1978). Crisis interven-tion
and the prevention of institutionalization: An interrupted time
series analysis. American Journal of Community Psychology,
6, 33-45.

Alden, L., Rappaport, J., & Seidman, E. (1976). College students
as interventionists for primary-grade children: A comparison of
structured academic and companionship programs for children from
low-income families. American Journal of Community Psychology,
3, 261-250.

Seidman, E. & Rappaport, J. (1974). The educational pyramid: A
paradigm for training, research, and manpower utilization in community
psychology. American Journal of Community Psychology, 2,
119-130.

Conceptual Frameworks and Integrative Chapters and Volumes in
Community Psychology